The Window Is Closing: Get Your Data Out of the US While You Still Can

The news this week is about bombs and drones. But buried underneath the headlines about the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran and Trump’s demand that NATO allies spend 5% of GDP on defence is a quieter story - one that affects every European who stores their photos, documents, or memories with an American tech company.

That story is about leverage. And right now, the US has an enormous amount of it over you.

What’s Actually Happening Right Now

On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury - a series of strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear programme and military leadership. The move was unilateral. European allies were not consulted in any meaningful way. The war is now in its third week, with Iranian drone strikes hitting US bases across the Middle East and six American service members already killed.

At the same time, Trump has made it clear to every NATO member: pay 5% of GDP on defence - more than double the current target - or the security umbrella goes away. He has already questioned whether the US would honour Article 5, NATO’s core mutual-defence clause. Former NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has warned there are no guarantees NATO will survive the Trump presidency.

And just last month, Washington escalated threats against Denmark to force the handover of Greenland - threatening tariffs against a fellow NATO member.

This is not the America that helped build the postwar order. This is a fundamentally different actor.

So What Does This Have to Do With Your Photos?

Everything.

Think about where your personal photos, documents, and videos actually live. If you use Google Photos, they’re on Google’s servers - a US company, subject to US law. Same for iCloud (Apple), OneDrive (Microsoft), Dropbox, or Amazon Photos. Even if those servers happen to be located in Europe, it doesn’t matter: under the US CLOUD Act, American authorities can compel any US-based company to hand over data stored anywhere in the world, with no requirement to notify you.

This was always a privacy concern. Now it’s something else entirely.

When a government is willing to use economic coercion against its own allies, data becomes a diplomatic weapon - and the tech companies holding your data are part of that arsenal whether they want to be or not.

Big Tech is not neutral. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are American companies. They are subject to American law. They receive American government contracts worth billions. And crucially, they can be compelled - through executive orders, through the CLOUD Act, through national security letters - to act in ways that serve US government interests. They don’t get to say no.

The Scenario You Should Be Thinking About

You don’t have to believe the US will deliberately weaponise your personal photo library to understand the risk. The realistic scenarios are more mundane - and more likely.

Scenario 1: Sanctions. If a serious trade dispute escalates between the EU and the US - over defence spending, over Greenland, over Iran - American companies could be required to restrict services to European users. It has happened before in other contexts. When the US imposed sanctions on Russia in 2022, American cloud providers cut off Russian customers with days of notice. Europe is not Russia - but the legal mechanism is identical.

Scenario 2: Access freeze. If you are flagged - by your government, by an automated system, by mistaken identity - as being in conflict with US foreign policy interests, an American company could restrict your account. You have no legal recourse under US law. GDPR does not protect you from a US government instruction to a US company.

Scenario 3: The data is already there. Even if nothing dramatic happens, your photos are already in a jurisdiction that has demonstrated it is willing to use economic and legal tools aggressively against its own allies. The risk is structural. It doesn’t require a specific bad actor.

Why Big Tech Won’t Protect You

When this topic comes up, people often say: “But Google/Apple have strong privacy policies.” That’s true - and completely beside the point.

Privacy policies govern what companies do with your data commercially. They have nothing to say about government orders. No amount of end-to-end encryption marketing changes the fact that Microsoft has acknowledged it cannot guarantee sovereignty for data stored on its platform when faced with US government requests. Apple, despite its public stance on privacy, has complied with tens of thousands of government data requests. Google responded to over 50,000 government requests in 2023 alone.

This isn’t a criticism of those companies specifically. It’s simply a description of reality: they are American companies operating under American law. When American law says “hand it over,” they hand it over.

Big Tech complicity isn’t malice. It’s structure. And you can’t negotiate your way out of structural risk with a privacy setting.

The Window Is Open - But Not Forever

Here’s the practical point: right now, you can still move your data. Your Google Photos export works. Your iCloud download works. Your OneDrive sync works. You are, today, free to take your memories and put them somewhere subject to European law instead.

That freedom is not guaranteed indefinitely. The same legal machinery that could restrict European access to American services - IEEPA, the CLOUD Act, executive orders - could also make it harder or impossible to retrieve data you’ve already stored. In a sanctions scenario, “export your data” may not be an option.

The time to move is before the crisis, not during it.

What does “moving your data” actually look like for a normal person? It starts with photos and videos - the files most people have the most of, the ones with the most personal value, and the ones most people have never thought to back up anywhere except their phone and a US cloud service.

A Practical First Step

You don’t need to delete everything from Big Tech overnight. But you should start with the most personal things: your photos and videos.

Here’s what a sensible approach looks like:

1. Export your Google Photos or iCloud library. Google Takeout and iCloud’s download tool both work today. Do it now, while you can.
2. Store a copy in European infrastructure. Find a service that runs on European servers, under European law, operated by a company with no ties to US cloud infrastructure.
3. Stop sending new photos to US services. Once you’ve found an alternative, make it your default.

At PixelUnion, we’ve built exactly this - a managed photo and video storage service running on European servers, under European law, with no connection to US Big Tech. Your memories don’t leave the EU. We don’t mine your data. We don’t use it for AI training. And we’re not subject to the CLOUD Act.

It’s not a political statement. It’s just common sense - the same common sense that says you don’t store your house keys with a neighbour who has started acting unpredictably.

See what PixelUnion offers →

The Bigger Picture

None of this means the US is an enemy. It means the US is currently acting in ways that prioritise its own interests over those of its allies - economically, militarily, and legally. That’s a fact, not a political opinion. Former allies don’t get a permanent free pass on scrutiny.

The Iran war, the NATO ultimatum, the Greenland threats - these are symptoms of a broader shift. Europe is slowly waking up to the reality that digital dependency on the US carries real geopolitical risk. The European Commission is pushing for digital sovereignty. Individual countries are updating their procurement policies. But institutional change is slow.

You don’t have to wait for Brussels. You can act today. Start with your photos. The window is open - but it won’t be forever.